It's an interesting thing, that, (TYPICAL martial) is the operating term. I would say, typical is sort of the analysis issue here in that the meta probably runs ALOT of dmg-nova focus (battlemaster with their limited dice count to be super special for a brief time).
I mean there's probably hundreds of thousands of variations of martials. I don't think it's very meaningful to say 'aha, one martial out of all of them can do this thing'. My use of typical is meant to carve out space for that kind of exception while still maintaining the ability to generalize.
IMO. We either talk in generalizations to some degree or the terms martial and caster becomes meaningless themselves.
I've made several grindy, defensive feat, Defensive fighting style martials with more passive potential and when they aren't built to TYPICAL meta they outgrind just about anyone else. If you've ever seen just a "boring" ole' toughness build champion with protection next to an ancient oath pali with protection, they can adventure so long just off their passives. Particularly, if you are well-adapted to going into encounters without a full life total. So IMO, if built accordingly, more martials would be set for the grind without rest than casters just off the nature of the classes. This becomes particularly evident when the grinders that are built to handle dmg are bypassed via good encounter craft and the casters take dmg, they aren't built with as much wiggle room usually even if you are sadistic enough to REALLY buck the meta and build a sticky full caster.
It's really easy to build a survivable caster though. And without having to sacrifice very much.
1. You inherently have ranged options in a game where many enemies are either melee only or vastly more dangerous in melee.
2. You can easily level dip for armor if you don't have it.
3. You can get the shield spell via magic initiate origin feat, or worst case via single level multiclass.
4. You can use a few spell choices on various mobility, defense, summon and control spells to aid your survivability.
5. You can often maintain a strong control spell (either precast or cast on round 1) and spend the rest of the time dodging, while still having a large impact on combat.
And of course there's options for even tankier caster builds.
Melee focused martials though typically have to make significant sacrifices in order to layer in strong survivability.
1. If they want really good AC by taking a shield they give up alot of damage potential and possibly ranged potential as well.
2. They still need a way to handle enemies wanting to maintain range (either mobility, a servicable ranged attack, etc).
3. If they want high damage they typically need a feat, but their defensive options also come from feats.
4. A large portion of their damage comes from abilities that have offensive and defensive options. Reckless attack, battlemaster dice, smite spell slots. If one plays more defensively this even further tanks their damage.
It's very difficult to build an effective martial character focused on defense.
Long ramble there. But, if you are talking consistency being at question over long adventures without much pause I feel like martials typically will give you the most wiggle room but with the least "flash" but consistency isn't really flashy
For what it's worth, one of my favorite characters was a Bear Barbarian/Swashbuckler Rogue back in 2014 rules with a fondness for grappling, high mobility, and utilizing sneak attack for strong opportunity attacks. I very rarely reckless attacked. I went more of a con focus than str or dex. My damage was a bit lower than it could have been, but as long as I was raging I was virtually unkillable (or at least the other PC's would die long before I would. This worked well only because I had enough control options and super high mobility layered into the build.
So yes, there's an example of an effective yet highly defensive martial, and yet I still had to really sacrifice damage potential. It pretty much required swashbuckler rogue for mobility, opportunity attack damage scaling and grappling ability.
But here's the thing. I don't actually think this character was more effective than something as simple as any spirit guardians cleric that primarily dodges when enemies are attacking him and that's without considering the rest of the cleric kit.
